Would you like to know why it is that I'm not as rich and successful as Donald Trump?

Or why it is that you are sitting there with less success and a lot less money in the bank than Warren Buffet?

One word will answer that conundrum: liar.

I'm a liar.

You're a liar. Pretty much everyone you know is a liar.

I'm not trying to pick a fight here - just pointing out that one of the most basic human traits - and the biggest obstacle to our own success - is our ability to pull the wool over our own eyes.

We tell ourselves all kinds of things to justify our actions (and more often inactions), but when we really get down to it, most of those things we tell ourselves are lies.

We make up excuses for our anticipated lack of success, and then set up a mental feedback loop where those excuses keep getting repeated in our minds over and over again.

The more like Donald Trump and Warren Buffet we become, the fewer excuses we make. Less excuses = more success.

Yet here we are, telling ourselves lies that if we bothered to take a moment to analyze would quickly be revealed as falsehoods. We tell ourselves the same old fictions over and over again until the sheer act of repetition makes them seem more and more real in our minds.

And before we know what has happened, our quick, un-thought through excuses become ingrained. They assume their own reality and success is once again pushed out of reach.

In this way we lie to ourselves all the time.

99% of all the lies we tell ourselves that affect our potential for success include one of the most common 4- letter words in the English language (okay, be pedantic, four letters and an apostrophe): can't.

Our subconscious mind doesn't like unfinished sentences, so when we say 'I can't' it has to tack on 'because' at the end.

So if you think, 'I can't be successful', your subconscious mind will add 'because I'm too lazy' or 'because I don't have the skills' or some other negative - and usually spurious - explanation. And then it is the false explanation that is stored, ready to poison your every effort.

'I can't write a book.' Why not? Because 'I'm not good with words', 'because nobody would read it' because I'll never find a publisher'. All silly statements that could easily be proved wrong after the book is written, but which serve to prevent you from taking action in case things go wrong, and of course, from ever reaching the success you really want.

When the 'because' is repeated internally often enough to be stored in the part of your brain that determines your own self-image, the 'I can't' is justified.

You just HAVE to make yourself a liar so that your knee-jerk 'I can't' reaction can become true.

It may be a paradox, but it is one that is holding you, me and everyone else back from achieving our success in all kinds of ways.

But you CAN break the cycle. You CAN start to change your subconscious self-image. You CAN stop your unconscious mind from making you a liar. You CAN be a success.

The only way that I know of to break the cycle is to remove the need for the brain to create its 'because' lie in the first place. Remove the 'not' part of the equation.

'I can' doesn't need a justification - it is a positive statement of fact.

'I can' doesn't make you a liar - it makes you a doer.

You have years of lies to address, so erasing them will take time, but it CAN be done.

Every opportunity you get, repeat to yourself 'I CAN do... [whatever it is you want to do.]'

Think about all the successful people that you've heard about. Most of the time they didn't start out with any more natural ability than you. They don't have any particular success secret to making it big. They simply go into every new venture with the attitude that 'I CAN succeed.'

The strange thing is that more often than not, when you start out something new brimful of confidence that you CAN succeed at it, events seem to work out that you will be successful.

Success comes from being honest with yourself and finally admitting that you can do it.